Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
side), but at other times the use of force was averted, because rational calcu-
lation suggested an overwhelming victory.
Most commonly, force was averted by the poor because it was abun-
dantly clear that the means to guarantee success were deficient. But at certain
favourable times, physical expressions of the desire to seek a fairer society
were able to extend far towards the base of the economic pyramid. At a few
times the poor could ask, like Oliver Twist, for more without expecting to
receive instant and brutal repression in exchange. Prior to the Black Death,
for instance, serfs were so controlled that they were required to keep their
hair short as a visible mark of servility. But after the Black Death, especially
in Western Europe, the bargaining position of the peasants increased sub-
stantially as the resulting shortage of labour improved their real wages.
One of the most famous peasant revolts was led by Wat Tyler, who
marched upon London in 1381, soon after the Black Death. Initially the
court was willing to negotiate with Tyler's men, but when the balance of
power shifted slightly Tyler was promptly murdered. Nevertheless, within
only a few more generations, serfs throughout Western Europe were liber-
ated. By the time of the English revolution, in the mid-17th century, a group
called 'the Levellers' were openly campaigning for ideals now recognisable as
socialism. In the 19th century, it was the turn of the Chartists, who
demanded an enlargement of the vote for men. Then came the suffragettes;
gradually the franchise was widened to all adults in Britain.
It is not that the Black Death, the English revolution or the relative pros-
perity of the working class in Victorian times led to a greater desire by the
poor for more equality, but instead that a slight relaxation in oppression
allowed greater freedom to
express
this desire. In the lands that came to be
known as the Third World soon after World War II, the period of decoloni-
sation also permitted more open demands for freedom.
Global terrorism and its connections to unsustainability
The events of September 11, together with a host of less spectacular terrorist
attacks, have come to define the new millennium. Writing in the
New York
Times
, Thomas Friedman (Friedman 2004) claimed that the threat to civili-
sation represented by terrorists constitutes the third great totalitarian chal-
lenge to open societies in the last 100 years. Might it be possible that the
massive increase in global inequality that has occurred in recent decades -
together with increased means, opportunity and understanding by the poor
